Thirty years ago, I was a teenager in San Marcos with mental health issues. The lack of knowledge about mental illness at the time and the stigma surrounding mental illness nearly killed me.
Don’t get me amiss — people tried to help. Teachers knew something was wrong — my grades dropped, my demeanor changed. I sent out signals the best ways I knew how, but mental illness was not something you talk about. It was considered something dangerous, something mysterious and maybe supernatural, some kind of failing. And in my severely depressed state, it made sense to me that I was deeply lacking as a human being and maybe deserved to feel the inexplicable sadness I lived with every day, so I didn’t have much motivation to seek an intervention.
Concerned friends dragged me to church. I was told that Jesus could help me — that the darkness that had fallen over my brain and my heart would yield to the holy light of God if only I prayed and asked for help.
